In the light of sobriety the next day, Miles continued to wonder at the magnitude of the crises that had beset his life. The enormity of it all had been clear to him even in his mojito-induced haze. What was easier to see than it had been the previous day was just how little control he had over either the origin of his troubles or their solution (should there indeed even be a solution).
When, four months earlier, he had loaded up his car with
It was Tuesday, and he followed his regular routine, rising at 6:30 AM sharp, walking the dog (Brian, he found, was as undependable at this chore now as when he was a twelve years old and making common cause with his sister that the family should acquire a pet), showering, donning a charcoal gray suit with black clergy shirt and round Anglican collar, arriving at the parish office aroung eight and perusing the internet for a while before heading over to the chapel for Morning Prayer, only then eating breakfast at his desk.
As he sat down to his meal, it was his alienation from Rachel that dominated his emotional field of view. How long had it been since he had even spoken with her? Weeks, at any rate. They had traded perfunctory emails over some triflingly mundane matters. Did she even know about the Tracy Lindholm mess? Surely Brian had mentioned something to her. Surely they had been in some sort of contact. They had always been close, as siblings go. Miles took some comfort in that knowledge, even as he suddenly felt weighed down with anxiety and grief over his own disaffection from her—or, rather, her rejection of him. He loved her immensly, and was wounded beyond words.
Brian’s woes did not weigh on his father at the moment with the same intensity, but Miles knew this was his own psyche’s strategy for protecting itself. He knew that, given the opportunity, he would be appropriately distressed by Brian’s continuing state of denial, and his own complicity in enabling that denial. The hour was coming, and indeed had arrived, when a good and faithful father of an adult son would look him in the eye and say “No.” Miles did not know whether he had it in him to be that father.
By any measure, the Coverdale children had outdone themselves. By her senior year at
Brian found himself to be a hot property as he closed in on his graduate degree. To describe him as “driven” would be too prosaic. He lived life like he was being chased through a narrow tunnel by a speeding ball of fire. His personality was, by all estimations and appearances, compatible with that of a commodities trader in the Chicago Board of Trade pit, and his contacts (Brian’s numerical and entrepneurial brilliance never outshone his interpersonal skills) afforded him just such an opportunity even before he graduated. In a relatively rare flash of forward-looking prudence, Brian passed this offer by, finished his degree, and accepted a position—at a starting salary in six figures—as an investment analyst with a major Chicago-based bank holding company. That was in June. The following December his mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Yes, the Coverdale children had outdone themselves, and then some. They had their father completely flummoxed. He and Sharon had not been ideal parents; he never would have claimed for them any such honor. But until a few months ago, he would have said that grace abounded in this midst of their parental miscues, and both his children had become accomplished young adults. He had not a clue, not even the wisp of a hint of a clue, what he and their mother should have done differently (beyond firing Lewis Ewald, that is) during their formative years in order to forestall their current misfortunes.
Of course, if he were not still in the shadow of everything else vying for center stage in the theater of his emotional attention, Miles would have been nervously waiting for the phone to ring and to hear Leland Rowell’s voice at the other end of the line. That situation had the potential to become the finest mess of all. Was the other stuff God’s way of diverting his attention and keeping him from worrying over much? If so, it was working. (Bad theology of the sort that he would would instantly name as such if it came out of anyone else’s mouth sounded somehow less unreasonable when it originated in his own mind.) He knew he was utterly innocent of what
He was not at all confident about the outcome. He should probably start thinking seriously about what his options would be if the investigating team ruled against him. There would be a church trial, of course, with his future in the priesthood as the ultimate sanction that could be exacted. Even in that milieu, however, it would be incumbent on him to obtain professional legal counsel. (Somehow, he didn’t see Vince Piaseki as up to anything quite so simultaneously delicate and offbeat as an ecclesiastical trial.) In any case, it would be costly. Miles was not exactly impecunious, but he was by no means wealthy. The lake house was already in jeopardy on Brian’s account. If he were forced to retain his own lawyer, it would need to be liquidated with dispatch.
If his circumstances had provided him with sufficient capital as to enable him to devote any attention at all to concerns that, in the current context, would have seemed relatively petty, he might be nursing some resentment and grief over the fact that Chase Landry had chosen to put position ahead of friendship. Of course, the Bishop knew nothing about the illicit goings-on between one of his cardinal rectors and a prominent lay woman of the diocese—God forbid that he ever should! But he did know about Brian, and he did know about Rachel. Yet, there were no regular phone calls to express pastoral concern as there had been in the days following
After rinsing out and drying his cereal bowl in the office kitchenette, he stowed it in the bottom left drawer of his desk and shifted his attention to his weekly task list, already categorized and prioritized. “Vestry prep” was next in the chute. The regular October meeting was a week off, and it was time for him to prepare the agenda for Donna to format, print, and mail to the vestry members, as well as decide how he could most productively exploit the agenda item labelled “Rector’s Report.” Miles contemplated the meeting with resigned depression. The malaise into which the group had descended at the August meeting still seemed to hold them in its grip. It felt to Miles as though he were participating in a slow-motion nuclear meltdown. Disaster had not struck yet, but it loomed on the distant horizon, and while it appeared there was plenty of time in which to take evasive measures, he felt paralyzed. The September meeting had lacked the sticky drama that had held the group hostage the previous month, but the underlying issues had not been resolved, only sublimated. As he looked ahead seven days, he was attentive to the angry irriatation that was rising within him—irritation with the petty sniping that was going on among the lay leaders of St Alban’s, sniping that was preventing them from engaging their actual mission as a church. From a systemic perspective, the recent downturn in Sunday attendance could no doubt be traced to a lack of harmony and cohesion among parish leaders, Miles conjectured. Yet, in the midst of his annoyance, he sensed his own powerlessness. He had always thought of himself as savvier than the average priest when it came to deciphering the dynamics of personal relationships in social systems like churches. But at the moment, he was tapped out, a dry well. There was some sort of shield between what was going on in the parish and his ability to comprehend it intellectually. Worse yet, there was a gap between his ability and his desire. Not only did he not understand what was going on, but he barely cared. This was disturbing. Or, at least he felt like it ought to be disturbing.
Presently, Donna arrived in the office, the phone rang, and there was a beep from his computer announcing the arrival of new email, so he was spared any further psychic torture for the moment. He busied himself with his day—pausing, of course, about every ninety seconds to replay in his mind a fragment of the previous day’s front seat exchange with Oksanna, and wondering what he might have said or done to effect a different result. The effort never yeilded fruit, however. By mid-afternoon, his computer beeped at him once again, this time with the news that he had thirty minutes to get himself to Elmer Johnson’s for a scheduled pastoral home visit.
Even though there had been some considerable thawing in Elmer’s frosty façade during their last encounter, Miles had trouble incorporating that experience into his intuitive memory. He was so accustomed to a tense exchange whenever he visited that he looked on it as a chore—something that was his duty, but which he would just as soon be spared if given a choice. So while it would be an exaggeration to say that he arrived at the Johnson residence with his guard up, he was certainly far from relaxed and at ease.
As always, Teresa, the daytime caregiver, responded to the doorbell and ushered Miles into the dining room, now occupied by Elmer’s hospital bed. Miles was greeted with enthusiasm. “Father Coverdale, it’s so good to see you!” Miles was not immediately conscious of it—it would only occur to him overtly only upon subsequent reflection—but there was something different not only about Elmer’s visible demeanor, but his entire countenance as well. It was as if he glowed —subtly, to be sure, but also surely. Miles walked briskly toward the bed and took Elmer’s right hand in both of his. “And I’m so happy to see you, too, Elmer. So happy.” In the moment, he was not lying.
Miles took his accustomed seat next to Elmer’s bed and prepared to take the lead in the obligatory round of small talk before dispensing the sacrament and returning to his office duties. Instead, Elmer threw his rector another curve ball. “Father, I’ve got a small bone to pick with you.” Such words were no surprise. Elmer had always been cantankerous. He was simply being himself. But there was no mistaking the fact—once again, Miles was only sub-verbally aware; he would come to a full realization later—that Elmer’s demeanor belied the menacing aspect of his words. He was not being hostile; he was being playful.
“Oh, no, Elmer. What have I done now?” Miles replied in a corresponding vein.
“You’ve been keeping it a secret!”
“Keeping what a secret?”
“Prayer.”
“Prayer?” Miles parroted quizically.
“Yes, prayer.”
“And what, pray tell—sorry, Elmer, I just couldn’t resist that one!—have I been keeping a secret about prayer?”
Elmer let out a healthy belly laugh. “Very punny, Father, very punny!”
Miles grinned broadly. “So, tell me. What’s this big secret I’ve been keeping about prayer?”
Barely able to contain his own jocular affect, Elmer looked startled for a moment, and replied, “I don’t know!” before surrendering once again to laughter. Miles joined him. When they were both composed, Elmer continued. “I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. It’s just that I’ve been —hell, Father, I’ve actually been praying. Really praying. Not just faking it. My God, Father Coverdale, I think I’ve been faking it my whole until now. I never would have thought that. I would have punched anybody’s lights out who told me that…”
Miles interrupted, “Then I’m sure as hell glad I’ve kept my mouth shut on the subject!”—a comment that struck both men as exceedingly hilarious.
Once again, when both has recovered their equilibrium, Elmer continued. “Like I said, I’ve been faking it. We would say grace at meals if there was company over, and when I was able to come to church I would kneel along with everybody else and tell myself that I must be praying, but other than that, I didn’t even make a pretense. I didn’t even try to fool myself.” He paused and assumed a more pensive demeanor. “So I guess I really wasn’t even faking it, eh?”
Miles replied with pastoral kindness,”You’re free to judge yourself on that score, Elmer, but I’m certainly not going to be one to judge you.”
“Well, you’re being nice, and I’m grateful, and I suppose you think that’s your job, but you don’t have to walk on eggshells around me. Just trust me on this one: I just plain wasn’t praying.”
Miles’ demeanor was now completely sincere. “I do trust you on that one, Elmer. I believe you weren’t praying.”
“Well…now I am. I don’t want to seem like I’m tooting my own horn, and I’m sure I’m still a rank amateur, but I do believe I’m actually praying now. I used to think…sometimes…on those few occasions when I did try to pray…that my prayers were just bouncing off the ceiling back at me, that they never made it to God.”
“And they’re not bouncing anymore?”
“It’s not that, really. It’s that they just don’t have that far to go. My prayers don’t have to travel any further than my words have to travel right now to get to your ears. I’m not any kind of theologian, Father Coverdale—you know that!—but would I be out of line if I said that it feels like the burden of finding God has been lifted from my shoulders because God has found me instead? I mean, I haven’t had hallucinations or anything, but it’s as if God is no further away from me than you are right now. And I know I haven’t gone anywhere!” With this, he motioned toward his paralyzed legs. “So God must be the one who’s done the moving, right?”
Miles did not respond quickly. This was a lot to take in. “Uh…who are you, and what have you done with my parishioner Elmer Johnson?”
Elmer laughed again with abandon. “I don’t blame you! You think I’m nuts, huh?”
“No, Elmer, you’re not nuts at all. You’re probably saner now than you’ve ever been. You’ve had a bona fide spiritual experience. God has touched you, and you’re feeling it, and you’re talking about it. It’s perfectly normal. Not something I see every day, but that’s only because what I see every day is pretty much sub-normal.”
“Well, somehow I think you’re just being too nice to me because I’ve always been, you know, a pain in the ass. But I’m going to let it slide for now, because I have more questions. Like, I’ve always thought of prayer as asking for stuff—“Do this, God. Do that, God”—but I haven’t really been doing that much asking. I mean, sure, I’d like to not have Muscular Dystrophy, but I’ve hardly thought to ask to not have it anymore. Don’t get me wrong, if I could jump out of this bed and walk across the room that would be a great thing. But having…you know…feeling like God is right here in the room with me, it puts not being able to walk into a whole new light. Is this weird or what?”
Once again, Miles felt like pinching himself. This was surreal. Elmer was spontaneously sythesizing and summarizing everything Miles himself had ever taught, and been taught, about prayer. He was so taken aback, albeit in a positive sort of way, that he quite forgot to respond. “Father!” Elmer cried. “I guess you’ve given me your answer; I am weird!”
Now Miles’ tongue was sufficiently loosened for him to continue as a conversation partner. “No, Elmer! Not at all. You’re not weird at all.” He paused briefly. “In fact, you may be the most truly normal person I’ve met in a long, long time.”
“What the hell could you possibly mean by that?”
“It means that…it means that, well, you are experiencing prayer as it’s really supposed to be, not the way most people think it should be.”
“Not the way I thought it should be my whole life, that’s for damn sure! I can’t believe what an idiot I was.”
“Well, I don’t know if you should be blaming yourself too much, Elmer. People in my line of work”—he tapped his clerical collar twice with his forefinger—“don’t always talk about it as much as we should or how we should.”
“People in your line of work, maybe, but not you,” Elmer retorted. “I can remember a sermon you gave—see, it’s all coming back to me now; it isn’t like I’ve never heard any of this stuff before; it just never sank in”—he tapped his cranium the way Miles had just tapped his collar—“I remember a sermon you gave—it must have been a dozen years ago; it was when I still got around easily and could still come to church—suddenly I remember that sermon as clearly as if I heard it yesterday.”
Miles interrupted, “More clearly than I remember it, I’m sure!”
Elmer was unfazed. “I remember it so clearly. You said prayer isn’t about results; it’s not about pulling God’s strings like he was a puppet or something. It’s about—how did you put it?—wasting time with God, I think you said.”
To save his soul, Miles could not recall any such sermon. Maybe he’d said that, or maybe he hadn’t. He was accustomed to his parishioners hearing all sorts of things he never meant to say in sermons. But whatever it was he said or did, it had apparently planted a time-release capsule somewhere in the recesses of Elmer Johnson’s soul, and the contents of that capsule had now broken through to the surface of his consciousness. Under the weight of such a glorious realization, Miles felt constrained, for Elmer’s sake, to put a substantial spin on his return volley. “It sounds like something I would have said, Elmer.” At the very least, it sounded like something he had often thought, and even practiced, though he could not remember actually saying it.
Whatever Miles lacked in certitude on this score, Elmer made up for. “You’re damn right it does! And not only in that sermon, but in things you’ve written.” Elmer referred to The Witness,
“Actually, Elmer, I sometimes wonder whether anybody reads that rag!” Miles wasn’t just being agreeable. There was a significant element of truth in what he said. He put a good bit of thought into his monthly column in The Witness, but rarely received any feedback. “But if something I wrote made some small contribution toward what’s been going on inside you, Elmer, then… then…I’m humbled…actually…hell, Elmer, I’m just an instrument, a tiny instrument that may have been in the right place at the right time.”
“Ouch! My bullshit detector is in the red zone! OK, maybe not. Maybe you really are that humble.” Miles didn’t respond. He was fighting back tears. Elmer continued, “The truth is, Father, I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but I feel like I owe you my life.” Still no verbal response from Miles, though he looked intently into his parishioner’s eyes. “I feel like I’ve gotten my life back. I’m still sick, I’m still crippled, I’m still dying. This thing only goes one direction. But I feel like I’m more alive now than I was when I was seventeen years old and running the low hurdles in track meets. I feel enveloped, and I don’t know what to call it other than love—God’s love. I’m a broken man, but I’m whole at the same time. And I have you to thank for it. You didn’t give up on me. You do your job in church, you get your message out in writing, and you keep coming to see me. I tried to figure it out before you came this morning. Over the years, it must be a hundred times that you’ve come to see me. You never talked down to me. You must have known what a moron I am, but you never let on! You kept coming, and praying with me, and feeding me the sacrament, even though I pestered you like an idiot about all sorts of silly things. God, what a fool I’ve been! But you kept coming. You didn’t give up on me. And now I’m alive again. Jesus is more than just something to shout when I hit my thumb with a hammer—how about that?! You didn’t give up on me. It worked. Whatever you did, it worked. I may be nearing the end of my road in this world. In my condition, one little bug could give me pneumonia, and I’d be history. I used to want to die because it would men I don’t have to suffer any more. Now, it not just that, but something positive, something—I know this sounds weird—something to look forward to for its own sake.”
“It doesn’t sound weird at all, Elmer. Not to my ears, at any rate. You sound like someone who’s gotten it.”
Now it was Elmer’s turn to be at a loss for words. Miles queitly removed the pyx containing the consecrated bread of Holy Communion from his breast pocket and set in on Elmer’s bed tray. Then he donned the purple stole that he kept in his car so it would always be available for use on precisely such an occasion as this. Softly, he inquired, “Shall we say our prayers, Elmer?” Elmer nodded in the affirmative, and Miles began the familiar Collect for Purity: “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid…”
After the sacramental transaction by which Elmer Johnson was fed with the spiritual food of the Body and Blood of the risen Christ, Miles took his leave and returned to the front seat of his Grand Marquis, whereupon he wept uncontrollably.
